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Tambourine   Listen
noun
Tambourine  n.  A South American wild dove (Tympanistria tympanistria), mostly white, with black-tiped wings and tail. Its resonant note is said to be ventriloquous.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tambourine" Quotes from Famous Books



... the foundations prepared for an equestrian statue of Louis XIV. The 17th, at Tarascon, she breakfasted with the Marquis de Gras-Preville, and was present at the games instituted by good King Rene,—tambourine dances and the races of the Tarasque. The 18th, at Arles, she visited the Cloister of Saint Trophime, and the Roman circus. About eighteen thousand persons were crowded on the ancient benches. The ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... to the voice of the ex-soldier, a voice reminiscent of a distant tambourine, and to Vasili's pensive questions, I conceived a liking for the men, and began to detect that in their relations there was dawning something good and human. At the same time, the effect of some of Vasili's dicta ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... market place to-day I found such a bored old bear dancing for a bored crowd. I've never seen anything quite so tired and patient as his eyes. His little old master was half asleep but he whacked his tambourine and whined his mournful song without a pause. I left Lupe and the C.E. and went out and patted the bear and asked the man (I am as handy as that with my Spanish!) how much he earned in a day. Less than fifteen cents in our money! Well, I asked him if I ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... no occupants. On the floor lay a skeleton doll, a toy tambourine, a whipping-top, and a wried tin whistle. There was one bedstead, and a bed made up on a mattress laid on the floor. On a round clothless table stood two plates, one with a piece of bread and butter remaining, and two cups and saucers. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... From his hurdy-gurdy the waltz is sublime; His fair daughter Rosa, whose tambourine flies, Is merrily thumping the rollicking time; The Widow McCann pats the tune with her slipper, The peanut-man hums as he peers from his stall, And Officer Quinn for a moment looks in To see the new steps ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... incantations a Wb[)e]n[-o] uses a drum resembling a tambourine. A hoop made of ash wood is covered with a piece of rawhide, tightly stretched while wet. Upon the upper surface is painted a mythic figure, usually that of his tutelaly daimon. An example of this kind is from Red Lake, Minnesota, presented in Fig. 22. The human figure is painted red, while ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... the white man's drugs. The performance of a self-confident angakok is quite impressive—if one has not witnessed it too many times before. The chanting, or howling, is accompanied by contortions of the body and by sounds from a rude tambourine, made from the throat membrane of a walrus stretched on a bow of ivory or bone. The tapping of the rim with another piece of ivory or bone marks the time. This is the Eskimo's only attempt at music. Some women are supposed to possess the power of the ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... Bacchus, in the parlour, make their libations of claret; and the young fellows, after a while, seeing a gathering of painted fans, and rustling hoops, and fluttering laces, upon the lawn, and a large immigration of hilarious neighbours besides, and two serious fiddlers, and a black fellow with a tambourine preparing for action, and the warm glitter of the western sun among the green foliage about the window, could stand it no longer, but stole away, notwithstanding a hospitable remonstrance and a protest from old Strafford, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Old black Ebenezer—but whose name had also been cut down for convenience sake to Sam, by the old Captain—did the orchestral duties upon his fiddle, which, aided by a youngster on the triangle and another on the tambourine, formed quite "a full band" for the occasion, and dancing was ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... the Boiragis, their hair braided in a manner pleasing to their husbands, are singing the tune of Govinda Adhi Kari to the accompaniment of the tambourine. Young Boisnavis singing with elder women of the same class, the middle-aged trying to bring their voices into unison with those of the old. In the midst of the court-yard idle boys fighting, ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

... diversity, but now, evidently, flattering and tender cronies, had started celebrating even since last evening; had caroused the whole night through and now had carried their noisy merrymaking out to the market. The hired musicians—two fiddles, a first and a second, and a tambourine—were strumming a monotonous but a lively, bold, daring and cunning tune. Some of the wives were clinking glasses and kissing each other, pouring vodka over one another; others poured it out into glasses and over the tables; others still, clapping their palms in time with the music, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... Risler went up to his room, leaving Sidonie and Madame Dobson at the windows of the salon. The music from the neighboring Casino reached their ears, with the "Yo-ho!" of the boatmen and the footsteps of the dancers like a rhythmical, muffled drumming on the tambourine. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... careworn, and the little girl beside him, evidently his daughter from the resemblance between them, looked so pale and feeble, that it seemed as if her little thin hands could scarcely support the tambourine she was ringing in accompaniment to a little plaintive song. Nelly enjoyed the performance exceedingly, but her admiration did not appear to be shared by those whose applause was of more consequence, for not a single penny found its way into the poor man's hat, ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... struggle are liable. The point for him was that here lay the one certain means of getting into touch with reality. Certainly that reality was sometimes of a disconcerting nature, and seldom of an illuminating one; he hated, as much as anyone, the tambourine business, except so far as it was essential; and he deplored the fact that, as he believed, it was often the most degraded and the least satisfactory of the inhabitants of the other world that most easily got into touch with the inhabitants ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... was the tune they danced to? "The drunken Sailor"—sometimes "Jim Crow," Tails in the way—and some got pinched, too, 'Cause they were too long. What do you think they had for a fiddle? An old Banjo with a hole in the middle, A Tambourine made out of a riddle, And that's the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... go on and could not, accompanying it, every time the right foot was raised, with an energetic, broken song, which, dying away, was again and again sounded—"hay-a, hay-a, hay-a," they went, laying the emphasis on the first syllable. A drum, similar to, though larger than a tambourine, covered with parfleche,[46] was beaten upon with a stick, producing with the voices a sound ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... is heard no more on all the Bar, and silence reigns through the calico halls of the Humboldt. His bland smile and his dainty plats, his inimitably choice language and his pet tambourine, his woolly corkscrew and his really beautiful music, have, I fear, vanished forever from ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... afterglow lingered along the Danube, these dusky musicians appeared and installed themselves in a corner. The old stream's murmur could not drown the piercing and pathetic notes of the violin, the gentle wail of the guzla or the soft thrumming of the rude tambourine. Little poetry as a spectacled and frosty Austrian officer might have in his soul, that little must have been awakened by the songs and the orchestral performances of the Tsiganes as the sun sank low. The dusk began to creep athwart ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... to wear a velvet bodice and a green skirt with a yellow border. I want to dance the tarantella with a tambourine in ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... Hanslick, Nicode, and Rubinstein, is scored for string orchestra. It opens with an overly reminiscent waltz-tune, and ends conventionally, but it contains a movement in negro-tone that gives it importance. In this the strings are abetted by a tambourine, a triangle, and a gong. It is in march-time, and, after a staccato prelude, begins with a catchy air taken by the second violins, while the firsts, divided, fill up the chords. A slower theme follows in the tonic ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... the only way in which we can preserve civilisation is by behaving decently and intelligently. Sanity appeals and argues; our rulers persevere in their customary porkishness, while we acquiesce and obey. The only hope is a maniacal crusade; I am ready, when it comes, to beat a tambourine with the loudest, but at the same time I shall feel a little ashamed of myself. However"—Mr. Scogan shrugged his shoulders and, pipe in hand, made a gesture of resignation—"It's futile to complain that things are as they ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... sight when several of these boats are moored together, when, their day's work over, their crews will gather round the fires, and to the accompaniment of tambourine or drum sing songs or recite stories until it is time to sleep. No sleeping accommodation is provided, and all the hardy boatman does is to wrap his cloak about his head and lie among whatever portion of the cargo is least hard and offers ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... first sight of a minstrel first part. "Gentlemen, be seated." The opening chorus was not half over before Alfred was laughing as heartily as ever boy laughed. The antics of the fellow with the tambourine who hit the singer sitting next to him on the head with it in time with the pattering of the sheepskin on his knees, hands and head, the assumed anger of the singer as he again hit him a resounding thwack, the finish, where the man with the bones and tambo worked ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... passed by the men in smoking, and relating their adventures, and by the women in singing and beating the tambourine, whilst my poor master and I were left to ponder over our forlorn situation. The mark of favour which I had just received had set my imagination to work, and led me to consider my condition as ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... a Nickel." Vehicles of all descriptions, from a Maine "jigger" to a "top buggy," were stationary along the village thoroughfare, their various steeds hitched to every available stone post. In front of the rectory some Italian children were dancing to the jingle of a tambourine. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... d'Amalfi accompanied himself, in dancing, with castanets. Corinne before she began saluted the assembly most gracefully with both her hands, then turning round upon her heel took the tambourine which the Prince Amalfi presented her with. She then began to dance, striking the air upon the tambourine, and there was in all her motions, an agility, a grace, a mixture of modesty and voluptuousness, which might give an idea ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... still there were some Spanish and Italian ones. Lucretia was a graceful dancer, and she was always ready to display her skill. She frequently descended from the tribune and executed Spanish and Roman dances to the sound of the tambourine.[168] ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... which are resting on the ground, feet in the air, while a servant brandishes a short sword with which he is about to decapitate the fourth beast. Above these, again, three musicians march in procession, one playing on a harp, another on a five-stringed lyre, and the third on a tambourine. An attendant holding a bow, and the minister Shutsururazi, stand quietly waiting till the sacrifice is accomplished. The long text which runs across several of the figures is doubtless a prayer, and contains the names of peoples and princes mingled with ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... with the necessary implements for planting the shaft in the ground; and after them a troop of maidens, bearing bundles of rushes. Next came the minstrels, playing merrily on tabor, fife, sacbut, rebec, and tambourine. Then followed the Queen of the May, walking by herself,—a rustic beauty, hight Gillian Greenford,—fancifully and prettily arrayed for the occasion, and attended, at a little distance, by Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, the Hobby-horse, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... refreshments. She was just the little round, soft, dimpling, downy bundle of youth and love he so often saw in his mind's eye, and so rarely in reality, and he was ready to fall in love with any one. The mutual acquaintance was formed, as a matter of course, over the piece of gold he threw into the tambourine, from which, as she passed from table to table, she was able to measure her hearer's appreciation of art. Those were the days in which he first began to be able to dress well, and to have a little money to throw away. For ten days or a fortnight he threw it away in considerable sums, being ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... eating-house, I suddenly heard the voice of our servant, Vassily, a young man of free and easy manners, "a lazy fellow and a scamp," as my father called him, but also a great conqueror of female hearts which he charmed by his wit, his dancing and his playing on the tambourine. ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... were a few things.... O this is wonderful." He waved a clenched fist about his head. "The finest people, Tel! You never saw such people, Tel. They gave me a tambourine. Here it is; wait a minute." He placed the bag he carried on his shoulder on top of a milestone and untied its mouth. When he pulled the tambourine out it was full of figs. "Look, pocket these. I taught ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... was her aunt's voice! She sprinkled out all at once to the birds the remnant of the dainties, and twirling the sieve as a dancer a tambourine and beating it rhythmically, the playful maiden began to skip over the peacocks, the doves, and the hens. The birds, disturbed, fluttered up in a throng. Zosia, hardly touching the ground with her feet, seemed to tower high above them; before her the white doves, which she startled in her ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... from the end, where the two great doors are not quite closed. On a rude bench in front of a few remaining, stacked, square-cut bundles of last year's hay, sits TIBBY JARLAND, a bit of apple in her mouth, sleepily beating on a tambourine. With stockinged feet GLADYS, IVY, CONNIE, and MERCY, TIM CLYST, and BOBBIE JARLAND, a boy of fifteen, are dancing a truncated "Figure of Eight"; and their shadow are dancing alongside on the walls. Shoes and some apples have been thrown down close to the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of a neighbouring coach, who have been listening open-mouthed to the siren, and shillings and half-crowns, and a bit of gold from the one last out of the Bench, pour into it; and she moves off, to make way for three French glee-maidens with a monkey and a tambourine, and the swells return to their cigars and their betting, and we are all attention for the next event on the card, because it is a gentlemen-riders' race; and the performances will consequently be as different as possible from what ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... sure," replied Chiquiznaque, "that such admonitions neither have been nor will be uttered for our benefit; otherwise, or if it should be imagined that they were addressed to us, the tambourine is in hands that would well know how ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... times. The source of this type is the Sudany dancer, such as may still be seen performing in Egypt, and we know that even in the fifth dynasty dancers called Denga (Dinka tribe?) were brought as curiosities to Egypt. B[e]s was often figured as dancing with a tambourine; he was the god of the dance, and protected infants from evil and witchcraft; hence he appears on the imposts of the capitals of the birth-house at Dendereh. The animal whose skin he wears is the cynaelurus guttatus, whose name is bes. Possibly ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... attracted by the musicians. There was a coarse, stout, sun-burned Irish woman, with an immense straw hat flapping over her freckled face, tied with a gaudy ribbon under her three chins, singing, "I'd be a butterfly!" At her side, stood a little girl about six years old, holding an inverted tambourine, to catch windfalls in the ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... When, on the contrary, the performance of our prehistoric friends was governed and determined by ideas of grace, there were not infrequently from six to eight musical instruments, the harp, guitar, double-pipe, lyre, and tambourine of the period being most popular, and these commonly accompanied by a clapping of hands to mark ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... show-people had set out a certain number of benches; and all who sat upon them were to pay a couple of sous for the accommodation. They were always quite full- -a bumper house—as long as nothing was going forward; but let the show-woman appear with an eye to a collection, and at the first rattle of her tambourine the audience slipped off the seats, and stood round on the outside with their hands in their pockets. It certainly would have tried an angel's temper. The showman roared from the proscenium; he had been all over France, and nowhere, nowhere, ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson

... instrument for use in sacred buildings, he certainly was not going to tolerate banjos and bones. This decision was a great disappointment to Benny Mallow, who had been selected by the managers to perform upon the tambourine, but in the revision of the programme Benny was assigned to duty in a tableau as a little fat goblin, and this so tickled his fancy that he did not suffer long by ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... this female votary of Dionysus. Before he made this drawing, Michelangelo had not seen those frescoes of the dancing Bacchantes from Pompeii; nor had he perhaps seen the Maenads on Greek bas-reliefs tossing wild tresses backwards, swaying virginal lithe bodies to the music of the tambourine. We must not, therefore, compare his concept with those masterpieces of the later classical imagination. Still, many of his contemporaries, vastly inferior to him in penetrative insight, a Giovanni da Udine, a Perino del Vaga, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... like Deborah, Beat the tambourine and danced While she sang a hymn in praise Of the slayer ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine

... During all these different productions, Fanfaro was continually assisting the performers; he handed Girdel the weights and took them from him; he accompanied Robeckal's sword exercise with hollow beats on a tambourine; he played the violin while Caillette danced on the rope, and acted as Bobichel's foil in his comic acts. Fanfaro himself was not to appear before the second part; for the conclusion of the first part a climax was to be given in which Girdel would perform ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... dishes cleared, an amateur luti from among the villagers produces a tambourine and castanets, and, taking the middle of the room, proceeds to amuse the company by singing extempore love songs in praise of the bride and groom to tambourine accompaniment and pendulous swayings of the body. Pretending ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... emerged from among the trees, the musicians scraped, tinkled, or blew, each according to his various kind of instrument, more inspiringly than ever. A darkchecked little girl, with bright black eyes, stood by, shaking a tambourine set round with tinkling bells, and thumping it on its parchment head. Without interrupting his brisk, though measured movement, Donatello snatched away this unmelodious contrivance, and, flourishing it above his ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of the natives of Timbuctoo; it takes place about once a week in the town, when a hundred dancers or more assemble, men, women, and children, but the greater number are men. Whilst they are engaged in the dance, they sing extremely loud to the music of the tambourine, fife, and bandera, [*] so that the noise they make, may be heard all over the town; they dance in a circle, and when this amusement continues till the night, generally round a fire. Their usual time of beginning ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... there was a mantelboard with maroon plush and wool fringe that did not match the plush; a dreary clock like a black marble tomb—it was silent as the grave too, for it had long since forgotten how to tick. And there were painted glass vases that never had any flowers in, and a painted tambourine that no one ever played, and painted brackets with nothing ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit

... tickets for the whole of them to Hull—the Balaams excepted (it is not on record that they spoke to him on his journey); provides Esmeralda with dresses and petticoats—not too long to hide her pretty ankles, red stockings, and her lovely little foot—gold and diamond rings, violin, tambourine, the guitar, Wellington boots, and starts upon his trip to Norway in the midst of summer beauty. Many times he must have said to himself, "Oh! how delightful." "As we journeyed onward, how fragrant the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... wrists and anklets her feet. Behind her stands a band of three instrumental performers, all of them women, and somewhat variously costumed: the first plays the double pipe, the second performs on a lyre or harp, the third beats the tambourine. In front of the goddess is a table or altar, to which a votary approaches bringing offerings. Then follows another table whereon two vases are set; finally comes a procession of six females, holding hands, who are perhaps ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... small sitting-room, simply and almost shabbily furnished, remarkable for some strange articles which were heaped at random on various small tables. There was a planchette, a tambourine, and other more mysterious appliances which suggested that the inmate spent much time with the trappings and rappings of spiritualism. Papers and journals devoted to spiritualism were scattered about the room, and framed "spirit photographs" hung on ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... indeed partly shadowing the countenance, was the withered branch of a tree. A harpsichord and several cases of musical instruments were placed in different parts of the room; and suspended by broad black ribbons from the wall, on each side of the picture, were a guitar and a tambourine. On a sofa of unusual size lay a Cremona; and as Mr. Beckendorff passed the instrument he threw by its side the bow, which he had hitherto ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... muster in their thousands on market-place, or green, With blatant brazen brayings, and thump of tambourine. Are you at prayer, asleep or sick? What odds? You're forced to list To the tow-row, tow-row, tow-row of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various

... waiting for the next I must 'a' et something poison. I was awful sick. I guess it was ten days or so before I come to enough to know where I was. I've had hard luck, bo—I'll say I have. I was robbed while I was sick, and only for a tambourine queen I got acquainted with, I guess I'd 'a' died. They're treacherous as hell, though. Long as she thought I had money—oh, well, they's no use expecting kindness in this world. Or gratitude. I'm always helpin' folks out and gittin' kicked and ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... French horn, saxophone, sax [informal], buglehorn[obs3], saxhorn, flugelhorn[obs3], althorn[obs3], helicanhorn[obs3], posthorn[obs3]; sackbut, euphonium, bombardon tuba[obs3]. [Vibrating surfaces] cymbal, bell, gong; tambour|!, tambourine, tamborine[obs3]; drum, tom-tom; tabor, tabret[obs3], tabourine[obs3], taborin[obs3]; side drum, kettle drum; timpani, tympani[obs3]; tymbal[obs3], timbrel[obs3], castanet, bones; musical glasses, musical stones; harmonica, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... three sorts of stringed instruments, the lyre, the cithara (or zithern), and the harp. The wind-instruments were the pipe, the clarionet, and the trumpet. Besides these, there were clanging instruments which were used chiefly in religious ceremonies: such were castanets, the cymbal, and the tambourine. Dancing was originally connected with religious worship. Mimetic dances were a favorite diversion at feasts. There were warlike dances by men in armor, who went through the movements of attack and defense. In mimetic dances the hands and arms played a part. There ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... gipsy, with a scarlet bandana handkerchief twisted round her head, a short skirt reaching not quite to her ankles made also of scarlet, and a little gay blue shawl across her shoulders. She was carrying a tambourine in one hand and in the other a ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... convey any idea, the whole body of mirth broke into a wild tarantella movement, so vivid and elastic and noisy that it seemed to Nino that he saw the very feet of the dancers, and heard the jolly din of the tambourine and the clattering, clappering ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... tambourine, so common among most of the Polar peoples, European, Asiatic, and American, among the Lapps, the Samoyeds, the Tunguses, and the Eskimo (see drawing on p. 24), is found in every Chukch tent. A certain superstition is also attached ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... offered to play to their hostesses, if there were any instruments in the house. The ladies were delighted at the idea, and Sadie went to see what she could find, returning in a few moments laden with two different kinds of flutes and a tambourine. Each Calender took the one he preferred, and began to play a well-known air, while the ladies sang the words of the song. These words were the gayest and liveliest possible, and every now and then the singers had to stop to indulge the laughter which almost choked them. In the midst of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... more to tell. It was a quiet session—none of that curtained cabinet, tambourine-playing business, you understand; but a plain revelation from my boy's spirit through the medium of a refined, cultured woman. I'm sorry, now, I didn't take my wife with me to-day, but I feared it might not be so agreeable, and I tried it ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... kind of timbrel, a rustic musical instrument made of a thin strip of wood about four inches wide brought round in the shape of a tube or drum, and having small metal discs fixed in holes at regular intervals like those of a tambourine. It is generally held in the right hand and struck ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer

... as children use the drum or tambourine in their games. They are fond of notching the edges of two bits of whalebone, and whirling them round their heads to make a humming sound, just as English boys do; and they also make toys like wind-mills, with arms to ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... said she. "Do not take it so to heart. Put it out of sight. There is many a pretty tambourine-tosser to smile upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... a kind of tambourine, ornamented with fan-like feathers, in the lodge. Fair Cloud used to play upon it, or rather shake it in a rhythmic way. There was also a war-drum in the lodge, and an Indian called Blackhoof used to beat it, ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth

... the admiral had sought to make friends with some Indians who approached him in a large canoe, by ordering his men to come upon the poop, and dance to the sound of a tambourine; but this, naturally enough, appears to have been mistaken for a warlike demonstration, and it was answered by a flight of ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... and wife should. That is how it shall be. (Caressing her.) Are you content now? There! There!—not these frightened dove's eyes! The whole thing is only the wildest fancy!—Now, you must go and play through the Tarantella and practice with your tambourine. I shall go into the inner office and shut the door, and I shall hear nothing; you can make as much noise as you please. (Turns back at the door.) And when Rank comes, tell him where he will find me. (Nods to ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen

... The ladies—"kinder scatterin'"—had gathered in for miles. And yet the place was crowded, as I remember well, 'Twas got for the occasion at "The Morning Star Hotel." The music was a fiddle and a lively tambourine, And a "viol come imported," by stage from Abilene. The room was togged out gorgeous—with mistletoe and shawls, And candles flickered frescoes around the airy walls. The "wimmin folks" looked lovely—the boys looked kinder treed, Till their leader commenced yellin': "Whoa, ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... are already dropping out of their place; and as the eye follows them, it rests upon a number of other musical instruments lying on the ground,—the pipe, the violin, the tambourine, castanets, and others. It is as if we were shown the various instruments which she had set aside as not satisfying to her, and at last were shown her organ itself falling to pieces and dropping ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... entertainment of the dead Sheykh. A party of men sat at the further end of the place, with their faces to the Kibleh, and played on a taraboukeh (sort of small drum stretched on earthenware which gives a peculiar sound), a tambourine without bells, and little tinkling cymbals fitting on thumb and fingers (crotales), and chanted songs in honour of Mohammed and verses from the Psalms of David. Every now and then one of our party left off talking, and prayed a little ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... being boosted. Have our children no rights? What is a train-ride with children without Hershey's charcoal bars? Or gypsum? What more picturesque on a ride through the country-side than a band of gypsum encamped by the road with their bright colors and gay tambourine playing? Are these simple folk to be kept out of this country simply because a Republican tariff insists on raising the ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... of a naked Hermaphroditus. In his right hand is a little torch reversed; his left arm rests on the shoulders of Silenus, who appears to accompany his songs on the lyre, whilst a winged Cupid sounds the double flute. On the other side is a Bacchante with a thyrsus and tambourine, and near her a little Satyr, who also holds ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... entirely easy to recall their peculiarities, and the features by means of which this is usually done amount to parody. For example, when it is a question of something Turkish, much is made of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the fife. In something Persian or Arabic, the triangle cuts quite a figure; but when it is a question between composers of the civilized countries of Europe, music has become a cosmopolitan language among them all, and only a small number ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... glimpses were to be caught of the blue caps, strongly marked countenances, and fierce mustaches of the Carlist soldiers; their strangely-sounding Basque oaths and ejaculations mingling with the clack of the castanets and monotonous thrum of the tambourine, as they followed the sunburnt peasant girls through the mazes of the Zorcico, and other national dances. Hanging over the window-sills, or suspended from nails in the wall, were the belts, which the soldiers had profited by the day's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... bay-windowed house, with a bar, kitchen, and tap-room all in one, and a large fireplace with a kettle to correspond, round which the working men have congregated time out of mind on a winter's night, refreshed by draughts of good strong beer, and cheered by the sounds of a fiddle and tambourine: the Jolly Boatmen having been duly licensed by the Mayor and corporation, to scrape the fiddle and thumb the tambourine from time, whereof the memory of the oldest inhabitants goeth not to the contrary. Now Nicholas Tulrumble had been reading pamphlets on crime, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... didn't feel so awfully bad when his father died, because his father used to make him turn the hand-organ all day, and half the night, and take up the collections; and the fond parent used to cuff him when there were less than ten coppers in the tambourine. They traveled around from place to place, with a big yellow dog and a little blue wagon that contained the show. They hitched their wagon to a dog. At night they would sleep in some shed back of a tavern, or under a table at ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... not find him at home when I next called. One afternoon, when nearing my own home, I met him in one of his favorite disguises,—a long blue swallow-tailed coat, striped cotton trousers, large turn-over collar, blacked face, and white hat, carrying a tambourine. Of course to others the disguise was perfect, although it was known to myself, and I passed him—according to an old understanding between us—without the slightest recognition, trusting to a later explanation. At another time, as I was making a ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... went round with the tambourine, the golden youth of Castel-le-Gachis turned from her coldly. Here and there a single halfpenny was forthcoming; the net result of a collection never exceeded half a franc; and the Maire himself, after seven ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the dusty window panes of which the last glow in the winter sky is tinging faintly with red, a dance is in progress. The guests, most of them fresh from the hillsides of Mount Lebanon, squat about the room. A reed-pipe and a tambourine furnish the music. One has the centre of the floor. With a beer jug filled to the brim on his head, he skips and sways, bending, twisting, kneeling, gesturing, and keeping time, while the men clap their hands. He lies down and turns ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... particularly hymny. The fact was, I had not thought of most of the hymns our sixth floor sang since I was knee high. In those long ago days a religious grandmother took me once to a Methodist summer camp meeting, at which time I resolved before my Maker to join the Salvation Army and beat a tambourine. So when Miss Cross asked me how I knew so many hymns, and the negro-revivalist variety, I answered that I once near joined the Salvation Army. "You don't say!" said the ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... opinion deepened within him as he listened to her singing in the drawing-room. She had been known to bluntly, flatly refuse an Emperor who had asked her to sing, and yet to take a little Sicillian street singer's tambourine from her hand, and sing the coppers and silver out of the pockets of the folk who had crowded the market-place at the first liquid notes of her song. She rarely sang in the houses of her hosts and hostesses. Tonight she had voluntarily ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... four or five young girls came to seek me, red as the cherries that hung over my head or as the graceful knots of ribbon that tied the long braids of their hair, and made me compose couplets for them to sing to their sweethearts in the afternoon, to the sound of the tambourine, under the walnut trees where the young people danced and the elders ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... he is not there now. How far more impressive it is to stand in an empty sanctuary in the house divine of "the Hidden One," whom the nations of the world worship, whether they spread their robes on the sand and turn their faces to Mecca, or beat the tambourine and sing "glory hymns" of salvation, or flagellate themselves in the night before the patron saint of the Passionists, or only gaze at the snow-white plume that floats from the snows of Etna under the rose of dawn, and feel the soul behind Nature. Among ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... was her hour! His eyes rested idly on a little old coloured print of a Bacchante, with flowing green scarf, shaking a tambourine at a naked Cupid, who with a baby bow and arrow in his hands, was gazing up at her. He turned it over; on the back was written in a pointed, scriggly hand, "To my little friend.—E. H." Fiorsen drew smoke deep down into his lungs, expelled it slowly, and went to the piano. He opened it and began ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... perceive that the time has come for you to stop. I might observe, not in order to combat your views, but merely to continue an interesting conversation, that there are still some knowledges which you have not assimilated—you do not yet know how to play the tambourine, nor how to be nice to your wife, nor how to get up first in the morning and cook the breakfast. Have you learned how to smoke strong tobacco as I do? or can you dance in the moonlight with a woman of ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... Cheerfulness. A woman with long flowing hair, crowned with roses, playing on a tambourine, and with open ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... organized become an efficient spiritual energy; and the higher the organism the grander the power that is developed, man being the most perfect organization evolves the grandest spiritual power, as a superior violin evolves finer music than a tambourine. But the intelligence and will of man are only phenomena, like the music, and have no existence beyond that of the organism that produces them. This is substantially the theory of materialists generally, and of the old school medical ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above. 2. Interior of church. 3. Scene with bridge, and trees above; figures on left, one playing a pipe. 4. Scene with figure playing on tambourine. 5. Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church seen through them. 6. Fifth Plague of Egypt. 7. Tenth Plague of Egypt. 8. Rivaulx Abbey. 9. Wye and Severn. 10. Scene with castle in center, cows ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... merry, merry voice singing something about la vendemmia; and though Lucy had never learnt Italian, her wonderful dream knowledge made her sure that this meant the vintage, the grape-gathering; and presently there came along a little girl dancing and beating a tambourine, with a basket fastened to her back, filled to overflowing with big, beautiful bunches of grapes: and a whole party of other children, all loaded with as many grapes as they could carry, came leaping ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of gluttony, one of the chiefs entertained the assembly with a wild and most unmusical chant, to which he beat time on a sort of tambourine, while the women outside the enclosure ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... staring at each other at a distance of twenty yards. How different it would have been if we were Frenchmen instead of cold-blooded Englishmen. After dark the fakirs had a "tomasha." Singing, bell ringing, tambourine-beating, and the blowing of discordant horns all at the same time, constituted a delightful music—to them at least—and was continued for hours, interrupted by shouting and yelling, and with this din going on I now ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster

... off his coat, took off his cuffs and vest, and thus half undressed he joyously danced about, beating a tambourine. Then he removed his shirt, trousers, shoes, garters and socks. Lighting his candle he walked to his bed, blew out the ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... his long fingers upon the goatskin of his instrument, while Kouidah, the boy who played upon the little glasses and shook the tambourine of reeds, slipped forth to tell in the city what Ben-Abid ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... space at the end of the room where the smoky fog from outside thickened and hung visibly in mid-air, and there was the empty seat of the man who was talking. Laura Filbert was one of the women. She might have been flung upon her chair; her head drooped over the back, buried in the curve of one arm. A tambourine hung loosely from the hand nearest her face; the other lay, palm outward in its abandonment, among the folds that covered her limbs. The folds hung from her waist, and she wore above them a short close bodice like ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... Kerner, who hastened back to Weinsberg to write the biography of this "delicate flower who lived upon sunbeams," we must shake off the spell of her strange personality and ask seriously what manner of mortal she was. This inquiry is the more imperative since the doings of the tambourine players and automatic writers, of whom so much is made in certain quarters to-day, pale into insignificance beside the story of ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... was the same ballad-singer that had twice crossed her path, and given her mysterious intimations of the lurking mischief that surrounded her. When the rest of the performances were concluded, she seized a tambourine, and, tossing it aloft, danced alone to the melody of her own voice. In the course of her dancing, she approached to where Inez reclined: and as she struck the tambourine, contrived dexterously to throw a folded paper on the couch. Inez seized it with ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... head she bound a fine turband, and about her middle she tied a waist cloth worked with gold and silver wherein she stuck a dagger, whose hilt was rich in filigree and jewelry. Thus disguised she said to the slave-boy Abdullah, "Take now thy tambourine that we may play and sing and dance in honour of our master's guest." So he did her bidding and the twain went into the room, the lad playing and the lass following. Then, making a low conge, they asked leave to perform and disport and play; and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... the other hayseed, convenient for the making of amateur cigarettes; the smoker's outfit being completed by a neat pile of rectangular clippings from newspapers. On the shelves of the whatnot were some fragments of a dead pie, the relics of a "Fifteen-Puzzle," a pink Easter-egg, four seashells, a tambourine with part of a girl's face still visible in aged colours, about two thirds of a hot-water bag, a tintype of Hedrick, and a number of books: several by Henty, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... the Esquimos are few. Tests of strength and endurance occur between the men of the tribe; and visits are paid to the various settlements, during the long winter nights; and songs and choruses are sung, accompanied by a kind of tambourine which is made from the bladder of a walrus or seal, and stretched across the ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson

... not bird, it has no nest; Nor band, in brass and scarlet dressed, Nor tambourine, nor man; It is not hymn from pulpit read, — The morning stars the treble led On time's ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... meekly cast down, bends to receive the golden coronet he is about to place on her brow. The Dove is omitted, but eight seraphim, with rainbow-tinted wings, hover above her head. On the right, a most graceful angel strikes the tambourine; on the left, another, equally graceful, sounds the viol; and, amidst a flood of light, hosts of celestial and rejoicing ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... and my end has generally been military material. Perhaps the vicissitudes of my life have made me insensible to what are called reverses of fortune, for, when a child, I remember sleeping on the moonlit flags of Paris, with no pillow except my tambourine; and I remember it not without delight. Let us sit down. I feel I am talking in an excited, injudicious, egotistical, rhapsodical, manner. I thought I was calm, and I meant to have been clear. But the fact is, I am ashamed of myself. I am doing a wrong thing, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... let down by a rope, and Turk, as the wolf, had been imprisoned there since early morning, with Grip to keep him company. At last all was ready, and the orchestra opened the entertainment with "Hail Columbia" on the violin, by Tom, accompanied by the jews-harp, tambourine and triangle, and a flute which could only play two notes, but made up in power what it lacked in variety. Tom had tried hard to learn "Hail Columbia" for this occasion. He thought he knew it, and the family thought so too, from the amount ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... coffee by drying beets, and flour by drying potatoes. Her practical little head was resourceful for any emergency. She felt sad at the separation from her husband, and her large black eyes were mournful but not tearful. To be and doing was her spirit. In spare moments she sat down to her tambourine to do crewel work on a tapestry picture. It was a large subject—The bard Ossian playing his harp to Malvino. Ossian seated on the front of some brown rocks, Malvino seated before him, her hands folded across his knees, full of tender regard for the gentle musician. ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern

... us again!" he muttered. "You good-for-nothing! I'll teach you! Now take the tambourine and gather up the coins from the crowd. You'll get a beating anyway for this. But if you don't take up more than we had at the last town, you'll have such a trouncing as you never yet ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown

... toast and the joke shall go joyfully round, With love and good humour the room shall resound. The slipper be hid—the stocking let fall, And rare blindman's-buff shall keep up the ball; Whilst the merry spinette, and the sweet tambourine, Shall heighten and perfect the gay festive scene. Such mirth and such rapture never were known, I'm surprised that so long you will tarry; I prithee, Ulrica—prithee, come down; For the sport of all ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... scientific trade. It would be no more absurd to give an idiot a tambourine and call him a musician—he would be an idiot all the same. So with the clerk, the laborer, the hod-carrier, the teacher; he remains the same in spite of all the polished arms, resplendent uniforms, and pompous titles bestowed upon him. ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... fire was lighted in the centre of the room, for the purpose of giving, at the same time, light and warmth. The music was partly vocal and partly instrumental. The instruments consisted chiefly of a sort of tambourine, formed of skin stretched across a hoop; and a small skin bag with pebbles in it. The women then came forward, highly decorated: some with poles in their hands, on which were hung the scalps of their enemies; and others with guns, spears, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... songs and dances, after the fashion and accompanied by the music of the provinces they represented,—the Poitevins playing on bagpipes; the Provencales on the viol and cymbal; the Burgundians and Champagners on the hautboy, bass viol, and tambourine; in like manner the Bretons and other provincialists. After the collation was served and the feast at an end, a large troop of musicians, habited like satyrs, was seen to come out of the opening of a rock, well lighted up, whilst nymphs were descending from the top in rich habits, ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... cornet, cornet-a-pistons, cornopean^, clarion, trumpet, trombone, ophicleide^; French horn, saxophone, sax [Slang], buglehorn^, saxhorn, flugelhorn^, althorn^, helicanhorn^, posthorn^; sackbut, euphonium, bombardon tuba^. [Vibrating surfaces] cymbal, bell, gong; tambour^, tambourine, tamborine^; drum, tom-tom; tabor, tabret^, tabourine^, taborin^; side drum, kettle drum; timpani, tympani^; tymbal^, timbrel^, castanet, bones; musical glasses, musical stones; harmonica, sounding-board, rattle; tam-tam, zambomba^. [Vibrating bars] reed, tuning fork, triangle, Jew's harp, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... your mourning, I'll mourn too!' cried the Prince, and seizing his tambourine, he began to thump on it with a will. Hearing the noise, the King came in, and asked what ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... what I thought of Red Gap. The chat was not at all unpleasant, as he seemed to be a well-informed person, and it was not without regret that I noted the approach of Cousin Egbert in company with a pleasant-faced, middle-aged lady in Oriental garb, carrying a tambourine. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... of the past, and careless of the future. After keeping up their noisy confabulation for some time, they removed to a level spot close to where I was lying: one of them squatted down on the ground, and commenced singing to the music of a sort of tambourine, that he beat with the flat of his hand; and the others at once formed a circle, and commenced a rude dance, which had probably been brought by themselves or their fathers from the shores of Eastern Africa. The air was at first low and monotonous, the time seeming to be more studied than any ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... his indignation lent such force to the gesture with which he put on his hat that the impact sounded like a blow on a tambourine. ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... of a tambourine, signifies you will have enjoyment in some unusual event which will soon ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... he saw, standing motionless by his side, a Spanish lady. He looked at her silently, noting her olive skin, her dark and lustrous eyes, the luxuriance of her hair. If she had only possessed a tambourine she would have been the complete realisation of his ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... of the same day, which was Sunday, toward eight o'clock, at the moment when a considerable group of men and women, assembled round a street singer who was playing at the same time the cymbals with his knees and the tambourine with his hands, obstructed the entrance to the Rue de Valois, a musketeer and two of the light horse descended a back staircase of the Palais Royal, and advanced toward the Passage du Lycee, which, as every one knows, opened on to that street; but seeing the crowd which barred the way, ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went up stairs in the dark, with my head tingling,—from Mrs. Joe's thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words,—I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking questions, and I was going ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... she was observed by all, she began a slow and stately dance, timing her steps to the soft jingle of her tambourine. The girl had a lithe gracefulness and stately bearing unusual in those of her class—whose exhibitions were rather of the fast and furious kind with a liberal display of their forms—and when with a last low curtsy she ended, there was ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott

... fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the company, Quickear suggested why not strike up? 'Ah, la'ads!' said a negro sitting by the door, 'gib the jebblem a darnse. Tak' yah pardlers, jebblem, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... the drawingroom, of course. [She goes out. Onward, Christian Soldiers, on the concertina, with tambourine accompaniment, is heard when the door opens]. ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... last. "Great," so the chorus ends with a picture, "great is the power of the stoles of spotted fawn-skins, and the green leaves of ivy twisted about the sacred wands, and the wheeling motion of the tambourine whirled round in the air, and the long hair floating unbound in honour of Bromius, and the nocturns of the goddess, when the moon ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... indeed seemed abandoned to merriment: as I passed to my room to dress for dinner, I heard the sound of music in a small court, and, looking through a window that commanded it, I perceived a band of wandering musicians with pandean pipes and tambourine; a pretty coquettish housemaid was dancing a jig with a smart country lad, while several of the other servants were looking on. In the midst of her sport the girl caught a glimpse of my face at the window, and, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... and gentlemen," announced the suave magician, "this cabinet is bare; precisely like Mother Hubbard's immortal cupboard. Can you see anything there? No! I thought not. Now I will place within it these bells, so; and this tambourine, so; also this empty slate. You see it is empty. It is quite a simple slate, such as any school-child would use, and its sides are entirely bare. Now I close the doors of the cabinet, so; wave my ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... a spectacle awaited him!.... Amid bottles, pastries, scattered cushions, tambourine, guitar, and hookah, Baia stood, without her blue jacket or her corslet, dressed only in a silver gauze blouse and big pink pantaloons, singing "Marco la belle" with a naval officer's hat tipped over one ear... while on a rug at her feet surfeited with love and confitures, ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... yielding jungle, which was so thick as to test the elephants' powers in clearing a passage through it, was presently varied by a sharp trumpet, then by a low growl, followed by that peculiar noise emitted by elephants when excited, resembling blows upon a tambourine or kettle-drum. This is a sound that invariably is heard whenever an elephant detects the fresh scent of a tiger; and Nielmonne, instead of standing quiet, became doubly excited, as she evidently understood that the dreaded game was on foot, and ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... is impossible to come to any right conclusion as to the authenticity of the African airs, especially as they have arranged the compositions of the great European masters in such a grotesque manner. The executants are five in number; one plays the tambourine, Mr. Germon, who is the leader; another the bone castanet; the third, the accordion; and the two others, the banjo, or African guitar. The castanet player does not sing; but his four colleagues have good voices, and, in glees, harmonize ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... tipsy-cake, and syllabub, in those days, as of finishing the evening without Sir Roger. Dancing had begun at seven-thirty. The lady at the piano was drooping with weariness. Violin and 'cello yawned over their bows; only spasmodically and half-heartedly the thrum and jingle of the tambourine ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... thumping a tambourine,' said Lebruno, during a caress. Irma bit her underlip with mortification. Their notes fell flat as bullets ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... as a stoat watches a rabbit. When he moved the Jew followed and took position at a commanding angle. The old man glanced from me to him and renewed his solicitations. So one could imagine an elderly hare thumping wildly on a tambourine with the stoat behind him. They told me afterwards that Jews own most of the stalls in Assouan bazaar, the Mussulmans working for them, since tourists need Oriental colour. Never having seen or imagined a Jew coercing a Mussulman, this colour was ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... Bhuiyas of the Garhjat States. [371] By Buniya he must apparently have meant the Bhunjia tribe of Raipur, who as already stated are an offshoot of the Baigas. Colonel Dalton describes the dances of the Bhuiyas of Chota Nagpur as follows: [372] "The men have each a wide kind of tambourine. They march round in a circle, beating these and singing a very simple melody in a minor key on four notes. The women dance opposite to them with their heads covered and bodies much inclined, touching each other like soldiers ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... 'Tommo will like to have me go with him and sing, while he plays his harp in the streets. I know many songs, and may get money if I am not frightened; for people throw pennies to other little girls who only play the tambourine. Yes, I will try; and then, if I do well, the little ones shall ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... under the stars? Some face, eh? What, Merne? You mean to tell me you are still so foolish? We left three months ago. I gave you two months for forgetting her—and that is enough! Come, now, perhaps some maid of the Mandans, on ahead, will prove fair enough to pipe to you, or to touch the bull-hide tambourine in such fashion as to charm you from your sorrows! No, don't be offended—it is only that I want to tell you not to take that old affair too hard. And now, it is time for you to ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... accompanying Old Ahab in the pequod to lay the world's grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever come back. Black Little Pip —he never did —oh, no! he went before. Poor Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod's forecastle, ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory; called a coward here, hailed ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... carried to a great length—much farther, indeed, than the Gypsies are in the habit of carrying it: a slack-rope dancer might be termed bittitardranoshellokellimengro, or slightly- drawn-rope-dancing fellow; a drum, duicoshtcurenomengri, or a thing beaten by two sticks; a tambourine, angustrecurenimengri, or a thing beaten by the fingers; and a fife, muipudenimengri, or thing blown by the mouth. All these compound words, however, would be more or less indefinite, and far beyond the comprehension of the ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow

... George Washington, and other great departed whose names are taken in vain every day by small-bore politicians, do not return and whack these persons over the heads with a tambourine, is almost—as Anatole France remarked in an essay on Flaubert—is almost an argument against the immortality ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... Janaki sent the slave he had brought with him to the pastry-cook's while Musli skipped homewards and brought with him a tambourine of chased silver, which he could beat right cunningly and also accompany it with a voice not without feeling; and thus Halil's bridal evening flowed pleasantly away with an accompaniment of wine ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... maiden within the forest green, There was a gipsy maiden who shook a tambourine. The stars of night had not the face, The woodland wind had not the ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck



Words linked to "Tambourine" :   membranophone, tympan



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